From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…
I started this
blog in March of 2011 – seven and a half years ago. During that time, this blog
grew from just talking about “my feelings” to looking at breast cancer research
and breast cancer around the world. I investigated the drugs that my wife had
to take, as well as talked about the aftermath of eventual breast
reconstruction.
Breast cancer
actually spread until it had infiltrated every aspect of our lives – the lifestyle
mimicking metastasized cancer, I guess.
But as I expanded
into different subjects and my feelings about them, I started to gain some
wisdom. I started to realize that encouragement was important; I stopped
writing my fictional re-imaging of Isaac Asimov’s novel, FANTASTIC VOYAGE
(which wasn’t, in fact written by him, but by someone named “Harry Kleiner,
based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby…Bantam Books obtained the
rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached
Isaac Asimov to write it…” (Wikipedia) He did, the book appeared several months
before the movie was released and has been associated with his name ever since.
As my wife would
say, “Squirrel!” (Referencing the Disney movie, “Up” and the intelligent dog,
Dug…This ALSO qualifies as a “Squirrel!” event…)
At any rate, it’s
not that my wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment is in any
way “over”, it’s just that other things have grabbed my attention now – as in
my father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2014 (which we didn’t discover until a
year later when I gained control of my parent’s medical matters. That’s a story
in and of itself but not the subject of this blog.) I started to look at Alzheimer’s
the way I’d looked at breast cancer and now my emotional energy is focused
there.
NOT that I don’t
care about breast cancer any more. I’ll be getting more involved with the “working”
side of the school district’s Relay For Life event in May 2019; and we continue
to live together with her breast cancer – it’s just become so much a part of
our life that it’s not exactly an…event anymore.
The upshot of this
is that I won’t be doing this feature except as an occasional bit. It will be
going the way of “Feelings, nothing more than feelings…”, the aforementioned
FANTASTIC BREAST CANCER VOYAGE, “Reconstruction”, “Somewhere Along The Way”, “Translating
the Doctors”, and “Breast Cancer Wisdom”.
So, if breast
cancer was your concern, by all means continue to follow for the “Breast Cancer
NOW!” which I use to highlight current research and the “Encouragement” entries
– the two satisfy the science geek in me and the need for encouragement for
ANYONE who walks alongside someone who is dealing with a life-threatening condition.
But I’m not going to be venting much anymore. At least not about breast cancer…
If you’re
interested, the new order of posts, ending with this one, will be:
Encore (I’ll
continue to repost the most viewed posts from this blog!)
Breast Cancer
Research RIGHT NOW!
Encore
Guy’s Gotta Talk
About – Alzheimer’s
Encore
Alzheimer’s
Research RIGHT NOW!
Encore
Encouragement (In
Suffering, Pain, and Witnessing Both…)
Thanks for your
time!
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